Restrictive Covenant Program Implementation Plan

Pursuant to Assembly Bill (AB) 1466 and California Government Code Section 12956.3, the Sacramento County Clerk/Recorder’s Office has developed the following Restrictive Covenant Program Implementation Plan.

Plan

Our office has approximately 23 million documents in the official records. The initial process will be the identification of documents containing unlawfully restrictive language contained in our records. This will be accomplished by utilizing existing redaction and Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software to scan records to identify potential restrictive language. Identified records will be routed through the process detailed below, and when appropriate, a redacted version will be recorded. Our goal is to complete the identification and review of existing documents containing unlawfully restrictive language, and the recording of the corresponding Restrictive Covenant Modification documents with the appropriate redactions, by the end of December 2027.

Process

The Restrictive Covenant Modification Program will provide the following:

  • Identification and location of documents that contain unlawfully restrictive language either through an electronic OCR process, or manually for older handwritten documents
  • Staff review of documents identified to contain potential unlawfully restrictive language.
  • Documents verified to contain unlawfully restrictive language will be redacted and an approval packet created.
  • Submission of Restrictive Covenant Modification documents to County Counsel for review and approval/disapproval.
  • Recordation and indexing of the approved Restrictive Covenant Modification document.

Tracking and Public Access

The newly recorded Restrictive Covenant Modification documents will be tracked and available for review in our Official Records Index. The recorded document will be identified in the index by the title “Restrictive Covenant Modification”. The proposed redacted Restrictive Covenant Modification documents that were not approved by County Counsel will be tracked in a CCR spreadsheet and will be made available upon request.

Plan Availability

The Sacramento County Clerk/Recorder’s Restrictive Covenant Program Implementation Plan is available in paper form in any of our offices.